Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.

The purpose of this study is to explore active after-school teacher?s perceptions of the concept of meaningful leisure time. The purpose of the study is also to investigate if the interpretations of meaningful leisure time affect the perception of their work roles and after-school teacher?s actual work in a leisure activity. The study also provides an insight into how afterschool teachers perceive their roles in general.

Many people perceive a division between an online world and the ?real? world outside of the World Wide Web. However, this view often leads to a reduced sense of importance ascribed to what takes place online, even though it affects life in very real ways. In our study we aim to explain the importance of how meaning is built in to sociomaterial compositions. By analyzing comment fields hosted by a Swedish IT-journal we illustrate how what is being said interplays with the technological platform in various ways.

In this two years master?s thesis I examine the library?s representation of research and its influence upon the relationship between the library practice and the research practice. I also intend to find out what controls the representation and if it is possible to see changes in the representation over time. My source material has been texts published in the Swedish library journal ? and social domain ? Biblioteksbladet during the last decennium (2001?2011).

The study aims to contribute knowledge about children's perceptions of the leisure-time as a learning environment. The study can be seen as an attempt to highlight the possible learning in the leisure-time, formally or informally.The study is based on two group interviews with a total of 11 children and was conducted by an interview guide with question areas to be discussed freely so that the children could give as full an answer as possible.Main results of the study show that children feel that they are staying at the leisure-time to get care when their parents are working and that they primarily associate the leisure-time with playing. The results show however that children feel that they learn things when participating in the leisure-time teaches controlled activities.It is possible to draw conclusions about the child actually experienced the leisure-time as a learning environment, but it can be difficult to identify when and how learning actually occurs. However, children do not perceive that there is learning while they play..

AbstractTitle: The Swedish real estate companies choices of valuation within investment properties and its further effects on the qualitative characteristics of accounting.-A study of the Swedish real estate companies listed and non - listed on the stock market, after the application of the international rule board.Background and Problem: From January 2005, all companies, listed on a stock market within the European Union, are required to prepare their consolidated accounts using common set of International Accounting Standards, IAS/IFRS. In Sweden, this opportunity has also been given to non-listed companies, to voluntary implement these rules in their consolidated accounts. One difference between Swedish accounting rules and contemporary International rules, deals with the accounting treatment of investment properties, which foremost affects the real estate market?s accounts. In contrast to the Swedish Financial Accounting Standards Council?s recommendation RR 24, the new standard, IAS 40, permits a choice between different accounting alternatives.

AbstractAt the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 the nations stated that traditional environmental policies were not sufficient to handle the multidimensional challenges posed by sustainable development. Governments needed to broaden their political decision making procedures in order to coordinate and integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Therefore a new tool was introduced in Agenda 21, National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSDS). The aim of an NSDS would be to bring together actors from all parts of society to jointly reach a consensus on how to work towards the vision of a sustainable society. An NSDS would be seen as a strategic tool to help focus national policies for SD.

The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state.

During the last two decades, technology has developed rapidly. It has become a natural part of everyday life, which we today take for granted. It isn?t until the last few years that technology has quickly become a big part in the school environments. Computers, tablets and other technology is today a big part of the education and teaching.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how Malaysia Airlines communicated during the two largest crises of 2014. Key questions to be answered are: Did organizational hypocrisy occur? If yes, in what way? Which communication strategies were used? Did the company mediate an unequivocal message and how was the information framed? Did any aggravating factors, which worsened the organization?s reputation, appear? How did Malaysia Airlines manage possible rumours? Was the word contact used as a keyword? The method of choice is a quantitative content analysis and the material consists of 20 different analysis units. These analysis units were collected from social media and Malaysia Airlines website. The quantitative content analysis is based on the theory Situational Crisis Communication Theory, taken from PR, Strategy and Application, Managing Influence, by W.

In many earlier investigations a recall advantage of auditory lists spoken in a single voice has been found over recall of lists spoken in two alternating voices. One explanation proposed is an organization strategy which makes recall of alternating-voice lists so difficult. The strategy implies sorting same-voice words into same-voice groups at encoding. Based on this proposition, it was assumed that voice-by-voice recall would be better than recall in order of presentation, as then the recall instruction and the organization of items in memory would be in concordance. The present experiment tested and was unable to support this hypothesis.

Mergers and acquisitions are common phenomenon in today´s society in order to increase shareholder value. Two years ago a fusion of Sweden´s two largest companies in the industry of real estate took place and even though three out of four mergers and acquisitions financially fail this certain case turned out highly successful. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the organizational structure and the management control have been designed and characterized the organizational performance and furthermore what are the success factors of the integration. By studying an acquisition and its potential effects on organizational structure and management control parallel to a model that describes the best practice guidelines for managers to successfully deliver value from their acquisitions, it can be shown that an acquisition has direct effects both on the acquirer and the acquired company and thus the new organizational structure. The main results, thus, is that through active leadership, increased specialization, and more decentralized and thus efficient management control a new organization has emerged consisting of the best features of two separate worlds..

BackgroundPolitics in some ways has always been about communication and marketing. In Sweden some people believe that communication and meaningful relations with the voters are of no value, instead it is the political content that is of importance. Media evolution has changed the conditions of political marketing; this has meant that the choices of the right communication channels in political marketing have become more important today than ever. Political competition in Sweden has become more even in recent years, this has called for political communication and marketing to be more planed and well thought out. Political parties have therefore begun to spend millions on marketing themselves.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to clarify and evaluate the concept of scenario planning.Methodology: Our research methodology has a qualitative approach and uses deductive reasoning. The theoretical field of strategy formulation has been reviewed and in specific the concept scenario planning was unravelled and mapped. Thereafter, our model was tested in a case study where the empirical data was collected through personal interviews. Theoretical field: Literature and articles from the strategic management field have been reviewed with a focus on strategy formulation, scenario planning and Williamson?s theory for the creation of a portfolio for strategic options.Empirical base: Personal interviews and secondary sources such as financial reports, articles mainly from industry media and articles found in the databases ELIN and Affärsdata.Analysis: The analysis work constitutes the testing of our model for scenario planning, integrated into Williamson?s portfolio of strategic options for the future.Result: The work has resulted in a clarified model of scenario planning with links to strategic management schools.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the identity of teenagers is affected by the loss of a parent as well as what coping strategies support identity development. The reactions the teenagers exhibit, in such circumstances, will also be examined. To accomplish this,  a theory package was created, comprising theories in developmental psychology, identity work, coping and theory of grief reactions of children and teenagers. This package provided a broad perspective, which facilitated the analysis. Furthermore, it made it easier to address the purpose and the issue of the analysis.